Personal computers are increasingly being used to control external tuners, such as a satellite tuner, a cable set-top box, a television tuner, or the like, and record the output of these tuners. These personal computers are often known as media center personal computers (PCs) and the applications that run on them to control the external tuners and record their output are often known as media center PC applications. The PC can be programmed to tune the external tuner to a desired channel station and at a desired time. Typically, the external tuners are configured to responds to IR signals and the media center PC has one or more IR remote control device devices that transmits IR signals to one or more external tuners and one or more tuner cards to which the output(s) of the external tuner(s) is connected. In one typical media center PC configuration, the PC has an IR remote control device and tuner card for each external tuner. The IR signals transmitted by the IR remote control device include the appropriate command(s) to control the tuner, such as to change to a desired channel. For example, the IR signals include the digits of the channel to which the tuner is to change. Such personal computers often use the Windows Media Center software to run the media center application.
One problem that personal computers running media center applications using the Windows Media Center software have had is that in some cases, the tuner doesn't properly change channels when commanded to do so by the PC. For example, system delays during channel changing sometimes cause the external tuner not to receive proper channel information from the PC. For example, one or more digits of the channel may be dropped either due to the IR remote control device not properly transmitting the digits or the external tuner not properly receiving the digits. If this error causes the external tuner to tune to a channel that does not contain any video information, the media center PC will record a blank screen.
Heretofore, the solution to has been to slow down the transmission rate of the IR remote device. While this has proven effective for subsequent digits of the channel, it does not solve the problem when it is the first digit of the channel that is not properly sent by the PC or received by the external tuner.